Shipping Corporation reports $28M loss

Press, 4 February 1987, Page 8

Shipping Corporation reports $28M loss

PA Wellington The Shipping Corporation steamed into the red last year, reversing a previous $lO million profit into a more than $2B million loss. But the corporation sees itself as a victim of the “chaotic” state of world shipping in which it says the biggest operators are struggling to make profits and many lines have quit. “A striking example of the industry crisis is the fact that in Japan out of about 70 shipping companies, including subsidiaries, 67 are operating at a loss,” the corporation said in its report for the year to August 31, 1986,

tabled in Parliament yesterday. The report also attributed the loss to continued industrial trouble on the Australian waterfront, last year’s meat workers’ strike, the relatively high value of the New Zealand dollar, the “dramatic downturn” in the relative value of the Australian dollar, and “pricing tactics” adopted by a competing State enterprise — the Railways Corporation. The Shipping Corporation said it had experienced its “most difficult” year since it began operations in 1974.

While its performance

was up to budget in tonnage terms, revenue had suffered severely through the erosion in freight rates.

The number of containers carried in the main trades during the year numbered 50,189 compared with 50,031 last year. But revenue declined more than $26 million or 9 per cent. “A telling example of the consequences of the freight war is that the average freight revenue per container in the corporation’s north-bound European trade is now below that prevailing eight years ago,” the report said.